Nitrate-laden water turns newborn blue
A 23-day-old newborn who had abnormally turned blue after she was put on packaged formula milk mixed with underground borewell water was treated by the doctors at a city hospital.
Doctors treating upon the baby at department of neonatology of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital said the girl’s body turned blue as the water used with packaged milk contained high amount of nitrate, which caused changes in the haemoglobin and changed it into methemoglobin.
The medical condition is known as cyanosis — a bluish colour to the skin or mucus membranes that is usually due to a lack of oxygen in the blood.
The baby girl’s parents hail from Gautam Budh Nagar, a district of Uttar Pradesh.
Contrary to haemoglobin, which is responsible to deliver oxygen to all the parts of the body through blood, methemoglobin is a compound having poor oxygen carrying capacity. Its higher concentration in the body leads to poor oxygen supply and cyanosis eventually.
According to the doctors, in this case, medical tests showed methemoglobin level at 67 per cent against a normal of less than one per cent.
If the levels of methemoglobin are more than 80 per cent then the chances of survival are very thin.
Dr Satish Saluja, vice-president, department of neonatology at the hospital said, “Since the baby was neither suffering from any congenital hear diseases nor her mother was taking any medicine that could have caused cyanosis in the baby, we suspected that water they are using with packaged milk might have been contaminated with nitrate content. We found that nitrate content was higher than permissible limit and causing cyanosis (turning blue).”
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